Shadow Beast
by CryingMoonTears
Summary: They call the leader the Shadow Beast because no one's really seen it before. Although no one's seen it there is no doubt that it's real." .” In the small town of Sunnydale, death is an everyday thing. The people there are hunted like game and they are


Shadow Beast

By CryingMoonTears

Summery: "They call the leader the Shadow Beast because no one's really seen it before. Although no one's seen it there is no doubt that it's real." In the small town of Sunnydale, death is an everyday thing. The people there are hunted like game and they are powerless to do anything about it. But one girl

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Prologue

-Buffy-

They call the leader the Shadow Beast because no one's really seen it before. Although no one's seen it there is no doubt that it's real. It comes out only at night to snack on pets and those few unfortunate people that wander out after curfew. No one knows when exactly it first showed up or where it came from. It was just suddenly there, lurking in the shadows, and everyone adjusted. Cats and dogs were no longer the ideal pets. Most people now days were buying their kids lizards or hamster or birds. Cats and dogs are practically non existent in Sunnydale now.

It was a town rule, you weren't allowed out after sunset. There were no exceptions, and the penalty for breaking this law was more than likely death, being eaten alive by the Shadow Beast or its followers, its Spawns. Death wasn't a big deal anymore around here. People went missing left and right. When a person is gone, only the closest family members and friends mourned their death. Like for Amy Madison. I knew Amy well, we grew up together and she lived just down the street from me. When she went missing, only six people attended her funeral, which was held with four other people that had disappeared the same night. My grandmother told me that when she was a little girl, more than thirty people attended one funeral. It's not like that now. There's no respect for the dead. Ever since the graveyards started overflowing when I was six, dead bodies were brought to the old junkyard and burned to ashes in a thirty foot fire. The town, since then, is now permeated with the stench of burnt flesh. Smells so strongly you can almost taste it. Not knowing what the stench came from would've been a lot easier to live with but knowing that it was the smell of your friends and family member's dead bodies brought on nightmares and made you was to gag. After a while though you get used to it. Barely that is.

Another law that was made for our safety was the colorless law. Stores in Sunnydale only sell clothes in darker shades. Colors like navy blue, black, dark green, maroon, and purple were the only colors that were safe to wear. The Shadow Beast and Spawns are attracted to bright colors. In old photographs I see people smiling brightly, wearing colors like orange, lime green and sky blue. I found myself falling in love with a picture out of an old magazine. In it was a girl my age, same honey blonde hair as I and same green eyes. She was sitting on a swing in the moonlight wearing a pink and yellow flower print dress. Not a trace of fear could be found on her face, only a look of pure contentment. In my dreams, I am that girl.

Sunnydale is like our own personal hell. You're probably wondering why we don't just leave. If the choice was ours we would drop what ever we were doing and run right out of here. But the choice is not ours and there's nothing we can do to change that. We are trapped here. As will our children, and our children's children. People can come into Sunnydale but no one can leave. The Shadow Beast knows our minds. He can tell what we're thinking. Phone calls to other towns begging for help, the line goes dead. Letters to neighboring states, the letter disappears. It knows everything. We can't hide from it. Every five years it chooses. And if you're chosen, then, well no one knows what happens to you really. But nine months after a girl, it's always a girl, is chosen there's suddenly more Spawns.

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AN: A chosen girl? I wonder who that will be. snickers Read and Review please!! If I don't get any good reviews I'm just gonna stop here. 


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